Good, better, best Christmas light packages are the same house quoted three times from one drawing, each tier adding two or three items to the last. On GlowBid's default C9 seasonal card, one two-storey prices at $1,684.20 for Roofline, $2,134.20 for Roofline and Grounds and $2,665.40 for the Full Display. The published starting points I could verify today run $800 to $2,500. Every line is below, with how the rate card builds each tier.
I run a permanent lighting company in Ottawa and I built GlowBid. The two pages that rank for this question are Jason Geiman's tiered packages post, four tiers with no prices, and Strandr's premium pricing guide, three tiers with no prices and no sources. This page has the prices. They are GlowBid's defaults, which installers replace with their own, and the two door add-ons are example settings, labelled where they appear.
The three packages at a glance#
Same house for every column: a two-storey with a single-storey garage, two front gables, a walkway and one small front tree, measured from one photo with the 16 ft garage door as the reference. It is the house from our seasonal per-foot pricing guide.
|
Roofline (Good) |
Roofline and Grounds (Better) |
Full Display (Best) |
| Roofline, 122 ft over two storeys |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Peaks, four runs, 48 ft |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Jumps, three, 16 ft unlit |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Timer |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Walkway, 30 ft of ground |
|
Yes |
Yes |
| Front tree wrapped, 50 ft |
|
Yes |
Yes |
| Ridge line, 24 ft |
|
|
Yes |
| Wreath at the door (example add-on) |
|
|
Yes |
| Garland, two swags (example add-on) |
|
|
Yes |
| Price before tax, default card |
$1,684.20 |
$2,134.20 |
$2,665.40 |
| Step up from the tier before |
|
$450.00 |
$531.20 |
| Deposit at signing (30%) |
$505.26 |
$640.26 |
$799.62 |
The step between tiers is the number the homeowner is really deciding on. "Another $450 lights the walkway and the tree" is an easy sentence; "$2,134 all in" is not.
What goes in the Good package?#
The roofline, the peaks, the jumps that connect them, and a timer. Nothing else. This is the tier that makes the house read from the street, and it is the one Geiman calls "lights on the roof". On the default card:
| Line |
Footage |
Rate |
Premiums |
Line total |
| Roofline, garage and porch (storey 1) |
48 ft |
$8.00 |
none |
$384.00 |
| Roofline, upper (storey 2) |
74 ft |
$8.00 |
storey 10%: $59.20 |
$651.20 |
| Peaks, four runs (storey 2) |
48 ft |
$9.00 |
pitch 15%: $64.80; storey 10%: $43.20 |
$540.00 |
| Jumps, three (unlit) |
16 ft |
$4.00 |
none |
$64.00 |
| Timer (add-on) |
1 |
$45.00 |
|
$45.00 |
| Roofline package |
|
|
|
$1,684.20 |
That is $9.64 per lit foot for the roof lines with the jumps in, inside Geiman's $7 to $10. The $1,500 minimum job on the default card is met; on a smaller bungalow it would not be, and the minimum is what stops Good from being a $600 job that costs you a crew day. Certified Christmas Lights in Houston and Dallas starts its Basic at $800 and Wolverine Low Voltage in Michigan puts a roofline-only basic at $300 to $600; both are smaller houses or cheaper cards than this one, and neither says which.
What goes in the Better package?#
Everything in Good, plus the ground: 30 ft of walkway stakes at $5 a foot ($150) and one small front tree wrapped, 50 ft at $6 a foot ($300). Total $2,134.20, a $450 step.
This is the tier where the house looks finished. The roofline reads from the street, the walkway reads from the driveway, and the tree is the thing the homeowner photographs. It is also the tier that lands inside Geiman's $2,000 to $3,000 average ticket and inside South Mountain's $1,899 to $2,799 for most Phoenix homes with lights, install, maintenance, takedown and storage. Certified Christmas Lights starts its Premium at $1,500.
The ground lines are cheap for you and visible for them. A walkway is 20 minutes with stakes and no ladder; a small tree is an hour on the ground. Our tree wrapping guide covers when a tree should be priced by the strand instead of by the foot.
What goes in the Best package?#
Everything in Better, plus the ridge line and the door. The ridge is 24 ft at $8 plus the 10 percent storey premium, $211.20, and it is the item that separates a lit house from a lit roof. The door is two add-ons that are not on the default card, so these are our example settings: a lit 36 in wreath at $150 and two 9 ft garland swags at $85 each, $170. Both sit inside Wolverine's published $20 to $300 a piece for decorations. Total $2,665.40, a $531.20 step.
| Line |
Quantity |
Rate |
Line total |
| Roofline and Grounds package |
|
|
$2,134.20 |
| Ridge line (storey 2) |
24 ft |
$8.00 plus 10% storey |
$211.20 |
| Lit wreath, 36 in (example add-on) |
1 |
$150.00 |
$150.00 |
| Garland swag, 9 ft lit (example add-on) |
2 |
$85.00 |
$170.00 |
| Full Display package |
|
|
$2,665.40 |
Certified Christmas Lights starts its Deluxe at $2,500. Geiman's fourth tier, the "ultimate holiday display", adds trees, bushes and "other prominent features" without a number; ours is the same idea with the footage doing the counting.
Why does the middle one sell?#
Three reasons, none of them a trick.
It is the first tier that looks done. Good lights the roof. Better lights the roof and the path you walk up. A homeowner who wanted lights at all wanted the second thing.
It is a round number under the top. Better is $2,134 against $2,665, 20 percent less. Strandr's guide marks its middle tier as the recommended option and puts its lowest tier "typically 20-30% below premium"; that advice is unsourced, and on this house the footage produced the gaps without any tuning: Better 20 percent under Best, Good 37 percent under. Brightly says the same about its own permanent tiers: four prices from $16 to $38 a foot, and the $32 one is "the sweet spot".
The comparison happens on your quote, not the neighbour's. With one price, the homeowner compares you with the next installer. With three, they compare Better with Good and Best, and the question changes from "is this expensive?" to "is the tree worth $450?" I do not have a survey that says what share picks the middle, and I am not going to make one up. What I can say is that a three-tier quote is the only way the top tier gets read at all.
The other half of selling premium is the picture. A mockup of the homeowner's own house with the lights drawn on is the difference between "a wreath" and "that wreath, on my door"; the mockup guide covers making one from a photo you own.
How do the packages map to kits in GlowBid?#
Two ways, and the first is the one we recommend.
Per foot, with the package as a checklist. Draw every run the house could have: roofline, peaks, jumps, ridge, walkway, tree. Each package is a list of which run types and add-ons are on the quote. Good is roofline, peaks, jumps, timer. Better switches on ground and tree. Best switches on ridge and the two door add-ons. The footage never changes, the rates are the ones on your card by run type, and the price of each tier is whatever that house's footage produces. You never quote a 90 ft bungalow and a 250 ft two-storey at the same package price, because the drawing will not let you.
Kits, with a flat price per footage. Some installers want to say "Roofline package, $1,650" on a flyer. GlowBid does that with pricing mode. Make a custom product line per package, set it to kit mode, and define kits at 150, 200 and 250 lit feet, each with a flat installed price. The engine picks the cheapest set of kits that covers the lit footage, rounded up to whole feet, with ties going to fewer kits. Jumps are unlit, so they never consume kit footage. The peak and storey premiums still apply, on the share of the kit price that covers peak and upper-storey footage, so a steep two-storey does not get a bungalow's price because it fit in a 200 ft kit. Trees at a price each and the door add-ons sit outside the kit as their own lines.
| Package line in kit mode |
Kits you define (example flat prices, ours) |
This house's lit footage |
Kit chosen |
| Roofline |
150 ft $1,300; 200 ft $1,650; 250 ft $2,000 |
170 ft |
200 ft, $1,650 plus premiums |
| Roofline and Grounds |
200 ft $1,700; 250 ft $2,050; 300 ft $2,400 |
250 ft |
250 ft, $2,050 plus premiums |
| Full Display |
250 ft $2,150; 300 ft $2,550; 350 ft $2,950 |
274 ft |
300 ft, $2,550 plus premiums and add-ons |
The catch with kits is rounding: 170 lit feet buys a 200 ft kit, and the homeowner is paying for 30 feet of lights that are not on the house. Say so on the quote before they sign, or price per foot and use the package names as the checklist. Either way, pick one mode per product line and print which it is.
Worked example: one quote, three prices#
The two-storey above, quoted on one page in the words we use with the homeowner, before tax:
- Roofline, $1,684.20. Roofline, peaks, the jumps between them, a timer. Deposit $505.26.
- Roofline and Grounds, $2,134.20. Everything above, plus the walkway and the front tree. Another $450. Deposit $640.26.
- Full Display, $2,665.40. Everything above, plus the ridge line, a lit wreath at the door and two garland swags. Another $531.20. Deposit $799.62.
Then a fourth number on the same drawing, for the homeowner who asks: the permanent track version of the roofline, peaks and jumps is $5,357 on the default card with a controller, no takedown, no bin, and lights the roof every night of the year. The permanent margin page shows what that job makes; the lease versus buy guide covers the three-season lease for the customer who wants the look without the capital. You can draw your own house in the free tool and the three prices change; the shape of the page does not.
Mistakes we have made or watched others make#
- Packages priced by house size instead of footage. "Small home $800" is a guess about feet. A 90 ft bungalow and a 170 ft bungalow are not the same job; draw it and let the footage decide.
- A Good tier under the minimum. If the roofline alone is $600 on a small house, the minimum job on your card should catch it. The default is $1,500. Set yours where the truck stops being worth sending.
- The top tier as a catch-all. Best has to be a list, not "everything you want". Ridge, wreath, garland. If they want a second tree, that is a line, and it has a price.
- Three prices with no picture. A tier list without the mockup is a menu without photographs. Draw the lights on their photo.
- Add-ons buried in the per-foot rate. The wreath is $150 because it is a wreath, not because the roofline rate crept up. Add-ons are their own lines on the quote so the step between tiers is visible.
- Forgetting the hidden 30 to 50 percent. Geiman's premium post says the costs installers miss, storage, drive, callbacks and takedown, run 30 to 50 percent of expenses; he gives no source, but the list is right. Bundle takedown into every tier and book it at install.
- Quoting Best first. Lead with Better. Good is the floor, Best is the ceiling, and the sale is the middle of the page.
How the rate card carries all of this#
Every package on this page is a set of run types and add-ons on one GlowBid rate card: per-foot rates by run type and product line, the peak and storey premiums, add-ons with unit prices, kits per product line if you want flat prices, the minimum job and the deposit. Draw the house once on your own photo, set the scale from a known length, and the footage, the bill of materials and the price all come from the same drawing; hide the runs a tier does not include and the tier's price is what is left. The quote PDF shows the drawing, the lines and a note that photo measurements are estimates confirmed on site, the homeowner signs on their phone and pays the deposit through Stripe. Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular, with a 7-day trial and no card.
